Aso, who also serves as minister overseeing the financial services watchdog, made the comment days after an advisory panel to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discussed a plan to ease antitrust rules that would enable some regional banks to merge.

Guidelines - Improvement - Management - Stage - Institutions

“We will review oversight guidelines to urge improvement in management at an early stage. Regional financial institutions are fit right now, but we need to consider the way to respond,” Aso told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

“To maintain financial services mergers could be an option.”

Legislation - Market - Share - Entity - Competition

The current legislation focuses on what the market share of the combined entity would be to determine whether it would hurt competition.